Air quality is important for many environments. In these environments, current technologies direct contaminated air through a series of air filters and scrubbers. The filters remove particulates, while the air scrubber removes the toxic/hazardous gaseous contaminants. The air scrubber is typically a large, heavy, high power consuming device, which has a low scrubbing efficiency over a narrow contaminant spectrum and a limited lifetime.
An ideal scrubber should have a high scrubbing efficiency over a wide scrubbing spectrum, a long lifetime, a low power consumption, and a small size and/or light weight. Current scrubbing technologies do not meet these critiria. For example, Venturi scrubbers, spray towers, and tray towers are extremely high power consuming devices that consume about 5 to about 8 kilowatt (kW)/1000 cubic feet per minute (cfm). Further, the floating bed and packed columns scrubbers have high pressure drops and high liquid-to-gas ratios (50 gallons (gal)/1000 cfm).